Cluster API Operator Quickstart

This section provides a quickstart guide for using the Cluster API Operator to create a Kubernetes cluster. To use the clusterctl quickstart path, visit this quickstart guide.

Quickstart

This is a quickstart guide for getting Cluster API Operator up and running on your Kubernetes cluster.

For more detailed information, please refer to the full documentation.

Prerequisites

Running Kubernetes cluster.
kubectl for interacting with the management cluster.
Helm for installing operator on the cluster (optional).

Install and configure Cluster API Operator

Configuring credential for cloud providers

Instead of using environment variables as clusterctl does, Cluster API Operator uses Kubernetes secrets to store credentials for cloud providers. Refer to provider documentation on which credentials are required.

This example uses AWS provider, but the same approach can be used for other providers.

export CREDENTIALS_SECRET_NAME="credentials-secret"
export CREDENTIALS_SECRET_NAMESPACE="default"

kubectl create secret generic "${CREDENTIALS_SECRET_NAME}" --from-literal=AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS="${AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS}" --namespace "${CREDENTIALS_SECRET_NAMESPACE}"

Installing Cluster API Operator

Add CAPI Operator & cert manager helm repository:

helm repo add capi-operator https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/cluster-api-operator
helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io --force-update
helm repo update

Install cert manager:

helm install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager --namespace cert-manager --create-namespace --set installCRDs=true

Deploy Cluster API components with docker provider using a single command during operator installation

helm install capi-operator capi-operator/cluster-api-operator --create-namespace -n capi-operator-system --set infrastructure=docker --set cert-manager.enabled=true --set configSecret.name=${CREDENTIALS_SECRET_NAME} --set configSecret.namespace=${CREDENTIALS_SECRET_NAMESPACE}  --wait --timeout 90s

Docker provider can be replaced by any provider supported by clusterctl.

Other options for installing Cluster API Operator are described in full documentation.

Example API Usage

Deploy latest version of core Cluster API components:

apiVersion: operator.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1alpha2
kind: CoreProvider
metadata:
  name: cluster-api
  namespace: capi-system

Deploy Cluster API AWS provider with specific version, custom manager options and flags:

---
apiVersion: operator.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1alpha2
kind: InfrastructureProvider
metadata:
 name: aws
 namespace: capa-system
spec:
 version: v2.1.4
 configSecret:
   name: aws-variables

The Cluster API Book